Brad is right, for two reasons.
First, it is the old internal civil war between Ssunni and Shia, which is being fought for a thousand years now. There never was peace between both factions, only an occasional regional status of cease-fire, when their means to carry on the fight were running short. It is the old clash between Sunni Arabs and Shia Persians as well.
Second, there is no grown nation like "Iraq". It is an artificial, instable and arbitrary creation of Western and British policy-making that set up borders on maps without taking care to the mental and cultural and tribal realities on the ground. If you raise a new zoo and place a leopard into the same areal like a gazelle or a lion, expect to see you animal inhabitants decimating themselves. there is no grown national structure of an entioty like Iraq, and thus there is no truly national mentality. There are only different ethnicities, faiths, and economical interests. The same of politcial foolishness is on display in Kosovo, Bosnia, and other attempts to artificially enforce multicultural national bodies.
Nature let things grow. Man tries to create, even against all reason.
All this talking about Iraq - it will never work for longer than just a handful of years.
Rice has announced that the US will deliver weapons to the Palestinians to help them gaining stability, a deal worth 86 million dollars, I think (which for the most will come from the EU, I have little doubt). It seems some people never start to learn. As a nice side effect, European tax money is used to boost American weapon manufacturers. One can only gaze in awe at today's politician's intellectual competence.
What said Kubrick so nicely? "Eyes Wide Shut".
Weekend is over. Luck for me.
